A piece from here a piece from there. I pull the parts together where, the facts I've found and those still gone are segments searched and sought so long. Together joined and linked I find, small questions answered in my mind. Assembling self and as I go, not really half, but never whole.

Assembling Self

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Adoption - Truth Telling

I wish this month for people to try to better understand what adoptees go through in life adopted. I hope for those of us adoptees blogging we can reach those who have only heard and understood the voice of the adoption industry and believe adoptees with "bad" experiences are simply anomalies in adoption. I pray for a change in the system of adoption policy, procedure, and law to openness and honesty.

What I would LOVE to happen is for everyone to STOP telling adoptees how to think, feel, and live. It's hard enough to take from the world who has no idea or conception of what adoption really is, does, and the ways it continues to affect us in our lives. We as adoptees not only have to spend enormous amounts of time and energy making sure everyone around us is "ok" with our reactions to adoption, but we are expected to make sure what we say and how we feel makes strangers "ok" too. Who we really are as adoptees gets lost beneath the unrealistic expectations, preconceived notions, and myths thrown out there by those who need to keep control of the system of adoption.

This week once again, a first mom gave us adoptees a lecture on terminology. We were not talking about anything other then OUR own experiences about OUR own personal situations. Many of us adoptees have been treated poorly and unfairly by many persons biological and adoptive in life. We have been silenced, disbelieved, and dismissed for telling OUR own truths.

I am who I am because of adoption. It isn't something I can remove or have taken out. I will no longer deny it or spend my life hiding behind masks. When I talk of my adoptive and biological family I am speaking of MY experience and sometimes yes, the experiences of those I know to show it's did not just happen to me. But, that's the problem with adoption it has always been about agencies, and lawyers, and religious institutions, and adoptive parents, and biological parents first and foremost.

Adopted children have had little say, little voice, and very very little support. Those times are over. Adopted children have grown up into adopted adults who are speaking out and will not sit down and take what is dictated to us by others any longer. Is the truth about adoption hard for people to hear, certainly. Are the lies, secrets, and falsehoods harder to live, ABSOLUTELY! Allow adoptees to tell you the truth about adoption and help grant them the same rights every other citizen has.

"I never gave them hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." -- H. Truman